Investigating the evolution of the view of European cartographers towards Iran in the Middle Ages

Abstract

The ideas of European geographers and cartographers about the world around them were generally taken from the classical texts of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the books of the Testament and the Christian commentators, which meant that their main ideas about distant parts of the world were based on the aforementioned texts. Both the maps of Mapamandi and the maps in the classical Roman tradition, which was also followed in the Middle Ages, were based on the information available in the testaments and classical texts. With the beginning of the 12th and 13th centuries AD and the numerous travels of Europeans to the Islamic East, including Iran, the classical ideas of Europe took the path of modernity and largely left their unreal form and took the form of reality. Therefore, the perception the East, especially Iran, by Europeans underwent changes and developments over time caused by various factors in each period of time. In the meantime, the numerous travels of the Europeans had a considerable influence on the change in the cartographers' perspective and information. The study of the evolution of the Europeans' view of Iran and Iranians over the centuries through the medieval maps is a problem that has not yet received attention. Therefore, it is important to examine how the medieval maps - which depicted the dominant ideas of medieval European society - presented Iran in different periods. It should be noted that the author of this article attempts to use a descriptive-analytical approach to express that before the travels of the European world travelers, the classical idea of ​​Iran prevailed in the medieval maps, and that in the meantime, Marco Polo's travels had a significant impact on the change and transformation of this view.

Keywords

• cartography
• portolan
• geographers
• travelers
• marco polo